Toyota Shows Off Car’s Ability to Exert Control in Emergency

At a press event Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show, Toyota showed off a car with safety features that, when layered together, allow its cars to more fully take control in the event of emergencies. The goal, Toyota said, is to reduce traffic accidents and give drivers a more carefree drive.

Jim Pisz, head of Toyota’s business strategy in North America, said the Japanese auto maker is building its technologies in three distinct ways: recognition, in which the car can see what’s around; judgement, where the vehicle decides whether it needs to take action and how; and operations, which exerts control when needed.

“We always feel that with autonomous driving, the driver should always be in control,” he said. Toyota’s technology will act like an attentive copilot, rather than a technological chauffeur. “It’s a critical element to our philosophy: autonomous does not mean driverless.”

With that in mind, Toyota has begun building a series of technologies, such as speciality sensors and various cameras, that can see what’s around a car, effectively allowing it to become aware of its surroundings. Some sensors will be able to see further than the human eye can see, the company noted, potentially allowing the car to react to obstacles before its driver even recognizes them.

Taken together, Mr. Pisz admitted, Toyota’s technology could create a driverless vehicle that simply pilots its passengers wherever they go. But he insisted that is not Toyota’s goal.

“Our focus is to continue and develop layer and layer over time of new and advanced dynamic safety,” he said. “What we think is practical now is building automated technologies one system at a time.”

During its short press announcement, Toyota also said it would work with various governments to allow cars to perform more functions.

Toyota’s entrance into driverless cars comes as auto makers have seen a renaissance in technology for the vehicle that was once called a “horseless carriage.” Proliferation of smarphones in particular, with tiny yet powerful chips and various mobile cameras, have greatly reduced the cost of attaching sensors to any manner of devices, including cars.

As a result, car makers have begun to seize on the opportunity to expand their technological footprint by adding new technology that helps show drivers what’s behind as they back up, what’s to the side if they hange lanes, and even if they’re merely drifting out of place on the road.

“Those are very real aspects of why we can move forward with technology,” Mr. Pisz said.

The car shown at the event was from the car maker’s Lexus luxury car division.